Blurry is not artistic

(Caution! Offensive post alert!!! The following post is based on ignorant subjective opinion, and is not a criticism of anyone in particular. Overly sensitive American photographers should take this with a very large pinch of salt)


In the vast arena of nude photography, there are a heck of a lot of blurry photographs around nowadays.

From a purely personal point of view, I am a very big fan of sharpness. Rich is very used to me nagging him, “No that photograph is NOT finished – can’t you make it sharper?”

Some photographers like sharpness and some don’t. Chip Willis does some stunning images which are super sharp. I am guessing they go through a pretty heavy sharpening process before they are finished?

So why don’t I like the…um…softer edged images? Well, frankly I think they are sloppy, and unsuccessful art. (Tactful, Lin, real tactful!) However, I’m not a photographer. I’m an amateur observer. What do I know about what makes a good photograph and what doesn’t?

Well, hanging out with photographers does rub off on me a bit, so I’d like to think I’ve picked up a certain degree of understanding on the way. So please indulge me here, where I (rather uncertainly) try to understand how Grandma sucks eggs. And please do feel free to correct me when I get it wrong, and if (and when) you have a different opinion. This is most definitely a discussion, not just my subjective and ill-educated opinion!

As I understand it, there is a big difference between controlled depth of field and blurred. A very nice man told me once that (paraphrasing here) “A controlled depth of field involves using a wide aperture to selectively focus on a certain feature. In portraiture, this would typically be the eyes, where extreme depth of field will result in sharp eyes and a soft focus on all other features.”

IMO, Chip does this really well. Consider his shot of Brittany V which is a perfect example. The eyes are incredibly sharp, mesmerising even. The rest of the body is in soft focus. Rich tells me that this was taken using extremely narrow depth of field caused by having a very wide aperture of F1.4. The end result is just beautiful.

However, some photographers tend to stick Gaussian blur on a photograph to attempt to achieve controlled depth of field. The result usually looks yukky and fake, at least in the images I have been studying anyway.

Alternatively the braver photographer might have a stab at a very long exposure shot, intending to show motion blur in the image. Rich says this is a different thing entirely. But to me this often doesn’t work too well either, unless the photographer is extremely experienced. Iksodas has shot an image which shows the technique rather well. However long exposure shots are VERY hard to do, and even if you get the technique right, you still have the challenge of getting emotion across in the image. With long exposure shots, I actually think photographers understand them better than us plebs. To an experienced photographer’s eye, the image might be really clever, because they admire the technique. But to some of us ordinary mortals, the resulting image sometimes just looks like a fuzzy blob.

There is a big difference between soft focus and no focus. Unless they are done properly, blurry images have no focal point. They don’t draw the attention or suck you into the photograph. They have no inner message to communicate, other than the photographer wasn’t terribly good. Yes everyone has to experiment, to learn. How else can their abilities grow? But what annoys me is when photographers make these mistakes, and then tout them as finished art.

To my inexperienced eye, blurry is not artistic. It’s just plain bad photography.

But what do I know? I’m just a piece of meat, right?



Rich doesn’t do blurry very much (which is kind of a shame because my body would look a heck of a lot better under the camera in a blurry shot than a sharp one). As I understand it, you can’t do controlled depth of field under studio lighting conditions, only in natural light. Although please do feel free to correct me on this. Truth be told, I’m rather reluctantly getting interested in photographic technique, dammit. The bug of “how do they do that?” is beginning to bite…

For the record, Rich definitely does NOT endorse this post, and finds it rather offensive. Discussions on this subject are most definitely “ongoing” in our household.

Oh dear…

(BTW, these are the mesmerising eyes of Miss Roswell Ivory, with whom Rich will be shooting again next week.)